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nasska

Blazeoflight is “blissfully unaware that Maori kids were thrashed at school if they dared speak Maori.” at the instigation of their parents who realised that Maori was a dying language of no use in an educated & technical world.

Inandout

Jack5 6.15: When will it ever end, this Maori shit? They are too lazy to keep their own language alive so muggins taxpayer foots the bill. Perhaps next election a party will appear that pledges to put an end to this apartheid; it is long overdue.

wikiriwhis business

“Winston Peters is going to be treading on very dangerous ground if he tries to bad-mouth the Government over the Panama offshore trusts business.”

Never thought I’d see that statement on here ……absolutely beyond ignorance.

Winston exposed the right wing winebox. The Panama Papers are going to blow the right wing wide open and J Key is a person of interest in this affair. Iceland PM already been deposed. Icelanders are so onto it. Rolled their bankers also.

Well I stand vindicated and totally won over.

Tell me there’s no such thing as conspiracies now.

At this level we now know much wider and deeper conspiraices are also being committed.

Funny how no one on this blog won’t deny Hillary conspiracies. Pffffffffffffffffff

Odakyu-sen

blazeoflight,

“Jack5 is blissfully unaware that Maori kids were thrashed at school if they dared speak Maori.”

How many years ago was that? Was it official policy of the Ministry of Education of the day? Was it a widespread practice wherever native speakers of Maori (under the age of 15) existed, or was it just a couple of isolated incidents?

Jack5

Blaze of light is “blissfully unaware” that was when also when non-Maori kids were “thrashed” at school for various indiscretions.

If Maori were punished for speaking Maori that was many decades ago.

The present Maori language campaigns are failing to stop the decline in Maori as an everyday language. This is the fate of most minority languages everywhere. They decline into cultural use. If they are unluckier, they disappear.

Maori are free of course not to accept that their language is destined to have just a cultural role. The language is up against not non-Maori attack, but against the world’s current lingua franca, English, which is the language of Western-centric popular culture. Maori hasn’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of becoming equally used with English.

It’s wrong to use shaming and wrong to try to put taxpayers on a guilt trip so they will finance a Sancho Panza Army to defeat the impossible to defeat – the decline of Maori as an everyday language.

Odakyu-sen

The speaking of Te Reo has to confer some tangible benefit on speakers for the language to survive. The State can prop up a language by offering jobs reserved for speakers of the language, but that is language life-support when the language is in a coma.

What are the benefits of fluency (a very loose term indeed) to non-Maori?

You see, when a language is strongly associated with one particular race, then individuals who are not of that race seem like “imposters” to the native speakers of that language. (Cultural/language “appropriation,” anyone?)

Stars And Stripes

“Jack5 is blissfully unaware that Maori kids were thrashed at school if they dared speak Maori”.

Thanks for this Blaze as you have finally shed some light on why when I was at school a lot of the Maori kids only turned up one or two days a week.
Fear of being thrashed at school or was it just they preferred to stay home and let their parents thrash them instead.

Odakyu-sen

Scott Chris

“Being bilingual leads to better academic outcomes:”

That may be so, but I would wager that the combination of English-Cantonese, English-Russian, English-Hindi, English-(some other language with millions of speakers and centuries of scholarship) would give a native speaker of English access to oceans of knowledge and cultural wealth, compared with, say, English-Maori.

@ wikiriwhi’s business (6.29pm) – so you’re saying then that Winston Peters wasn’t actually censured by Parliament for telling porkies in his pecuniary interest return, didn’t tell a big, fat fib when he held up the “NO” sign, and didn’t launder donations through the Spencer Trust?

nasska

Kimbo

@ Odakyu-sen

That may be so, but I would wager that the combination of English-Cantonese, English-Russian, English-Hindi, English-(some other language with millions of speakers and centuries of scholarship) would give a native speaker of English access to oceans of knowledge and cultural wealth, compared with, say, English-Maori.

Hmm. I’d be satisfied that someone with a combination of English-Latin would (to quote you) “give a native speaker of English access to oceans of knowledge and cultural wealth”…and Latin is a dead language.

Maori is indigenous to NZ, it therefore thoroughly appropriate as the “second language” Kiwis should be learning as a compulsory part of our education curriculum, just as many Western nations make it compulsory to learn another language. Any other language is the gateway to a myriad of transferable and practical linguistic and cognitive skills, and contrary to your implied assertion, learning Maori does not detract from the ability to learn other supposedly “useful” (sic) languages – in fact it enhances it.

Another language is more than just a tool like a spade, i.e., translating for Chinese tourists, or doing business deals with Indian businessmen. Instead, it is a gateway to another world of thought. Once you do that once, it gets easier and easier.

Or is education nothing more than getting a job and earning some money like a bunch of technologically proficient barbarians?!

wikiriwhis business

wikiriwhis business

” so you’re saying then that Winston Peters wasn’t actually censured by Parliament for telling porkies in his pecuniary interest return, didn’t tell a big, fat fib when he held up the “NO” sign, and didn’t launder donations through the Spencer Trust?”

blazeoflight

Kimbo

@ nasska

Blazeoflight is “blissfully unaware that Maori kids were thrashed at school if they dared speak Maori.” at the instigation of their parents who realised that Maori was a dying language of no use in an educated & technical world.

Fact!

Almost entirely correct…except it wasn’t that the parents necessarily considered “that Maori was a dying language of no use in an educated & technical world”, but rather speaking English and only English at school was the opportunity for their kids to become truly bilingual. The children’s ability to speak Maori was evidence that it was readily spoken and valued at home.

nasska

….’The children’s ability to speak Maori was evidence that it was readily spoken and valued at home.”….

Spoken but not valued Kimbo. I was brought up on the East Coast of the 1950s & the parents of my Maori classmates were bi lingual but felt that Maori was a dead end for their kids. I get pretty pissed when I hear the reinvented Maori blaming the Pakeha for wiping out their language when in realty it was the parent’s own choice. The migration to the cities set the decline in cement.

thedavincimode

Captain Mainwaring

nasska (15,867 comments) says:
April 5th, 2016 at 9:10 pm
Anyone want to have a crack at what pushes a comment into the moderation queue? I replied to SC at 8.36 & I’m buggered if I can see what it contains that would be a requirement for moderation.

If it’s not random or based on key words then what on Planet Earth triggers it?

I wouldn’t fret. Happened to me about a week ago so I emailed our host who was equally mystified.

labrator

You’re usually pretty sharp @blazeoflight but businesses don’t stick around by being stupid. They have heard of solar before. Additionally, Labour and the Greens seem really keen on urban intensification which lowers the ability for self-sustaining solar. It’ll get outsourced, to a power company. Your reality is unlikely to break more than about 10% if the country, if they’re lucky. Power companies aren’t going anywhere.

Odakyu-sen

I can’t imagine having solar panels on my roof. The cost of renting scaffolding so that someone can get up there and service the panels every couple of years would eat up any savings in electricity generation. (Nobody can use ladders any more.)

Jack5

Funnily enough, National has done more than Labour, since the Lange government, to advance the Maori cause.

And you old pricks are still gnashing your (false?) teeth in fury!

Blaze, you’re no chicken. An adult student, aren’t you (or just a slow learner)?

National has given Maori a lift, and stacked the party with Maori list MPs so that now Maori are over-represented in Parliament. However, IMHO, the real lift has come from MMP, giving the 2 per cent Maori Party undemocratic weight.

But if you are going to hitch yourself to a cultural language, you’d probably do better learning Latin, Blaze. Or for a second language that has use in travel, business, and has a rich trove of written literature: Chinese or Spanish or Hindi or Japanese or French or German or Russian.

Re your (in another post):

We have solar and pay them ef all.

Don’t you expense your fixed asset purchases, Blaze. I thought you were an economic student. I thought you would also do some accounting in a business course.

calendar girl

@11:32am –

“[DPF: Strike 1. Don;t make accusations without substance]”

DPF in my opinion, that’s one of the most unfortunate “strikes” (most of them well-merited) that I have seen you issue to date.

Ms Penny Bright as “Public Watchdog” frequently directs ‘unsubstantiated’ allegations of that kind against other people, yet she has chalked up only two strikes (May and June 2915) for all the untruths, bile, smears and innuendo that she has directed at other commentators. Usually week in, week out.

Happychappy may have been marginally out of line in your judgment, but only marginally if you accept the standards of smearing and vilification that Ms Bright adopts as part of her regular modus operandi (even making allowances for her using her own name to which your Comments Policy attributes a degree of leniency).

It’s your blog, therefore your sole prerogative, but may I suggest – with the geatest of respect – that you review your ruling on this particular occasion. It seems to me to be harsh, disproportionate and unbalanced given the actions of the ‘aggrieved’ party.

Inandout

Helen was on Henry’s show this morning, and she talked and talked and talked, and really said nothing. Then Goff came on and talked and talked and talked, and really said nothing. Paul seems to love these two politicians and warmly praises them; God help us.

stephieboy

Inandout

stephieboy 7.53: Oh you Muslims hang your hope on these two don’t you, one who will Islamicise the UN, and other to Islamicise Auckland. Isn’t it time for your second head banging of the day, because your punctuation is abysmal.